Obtain Mail app RTF data from selected message

AppleScript
#1

Hi, community.

Does someone know whether it’s possible to obtain RTF data from a specific mail message using asobjc ?

Mail scripting dictionary contains the following property:

content: rich text

However, I didn’t have luck obtaining rich text data.

#2

Perhaps the clipboard provides a feasible route ?

Once you have selected and copied some part (or all) of the message content, you can then read the public.rtf pasteboard item.

1 Like
#3

That worked. Thank you very much Rob.

Of course, I would have hoped for a solution which doesn’t involve selecting the message. content property seemed promising. But this is very good.

1 Like
#4

You can also load an attributed string from the HTML source of the message, e.g.:

use framework "AppKit"
tell application "Mail"
	-- Get the message (using selection here, but could get by ID all the same)
	set theMessage to item 1 of (selection as list)

	-- Get the source HTML as an NSString object
	set theSourceString to current application's NSString's alloc()'s initWithString:(source of theMessage)

	-- Create an attributed string from the HTML data
	set theHTMLData to theSourceString's dataUsingEncoding:(current application's NSUnicodeStringEncoding)
	set attributedString to current application's NSAttributedString's alloc()'s initWithHTML: theHTMLData documentAttributes:(current application's NSDictionary's alloc()'s init())

	-- Load the data as RTF & save to file
	set theRTFData to attributedString's RTFFromRange:{0, attributedString's |length|()} documentAttributes:(current application's NSDictionary's alloc()'s init())
	theRTFData's writeToFile:"/Users/example/Downloads/example.rtf" atomically:false
end tell

You might want to mess around with the range a bit to isolate just the content of the message, excluding headers.

2 Likes
#5

Thank you so much, Stephen. I’ll try and report back when I am back at the computer.

#6

Hello, Stephen.

Just back from a trip and tested.

I get:

2023-08-15 09:58:28.157 osascript[1891:77816] *** -[NSConcreteAttributedString initWithHTML:documentAttributes:]: value passed to argument of type ^@ must be either missing value' or reference’; assuming `missing value’.
false

Any ideas about this error ?

#7

Hm, that error only shows when I run it via osascript, but it still creates the RTF file correctly and returns true.

To remove the error: try changing the attributedString line to this: set attributedString to current application's NSAttributedString's alloc()'s initWithHTML:theHTMLData documentAttributes:(missing value)

Also make sure you replace ‘example’ in the output file path at the end with your user.

1 Like